|
|
 |
Office of General Counsel Search String Tips Procedure for formulating an effective search string (1) Estimate the number of pertinent results that you would like to retrieve from your search.
- How many results can you reasonably peruse within your time frame?
- How many sources do you need to retrieve to serve your purposes? (Do you simply need general information or many sources to sere as support for a detailed research article?)
(2) Chose the Internet resource that will best meet your needs. (3) Begin your search with general terms.
- For example, if you are searching for information on Parkinson's disease, use the term "Parkinson."
- If the search generates more results than desired - i.e., more than the number of results estimated in (1) above - then proceed to the next step.
- If the search generates too few results, then try to broaden the search term even further. For example, use "disease," rather than "Parkinson." You may also want to try synonyms for your search term(s).
(4) Narrow your search by:
- Running your search within one of the subsets offered by the search engine. For example, the HotBot search engine has a "health" category, with the subcategory "Conditions and Diseases." The search could be performed within this subcategory, thereby reducing the number of irrelevant results (for example, a web page containing the phrase "Mr. Parkinson's car" would not be included in the search results).
- Adding more terms to your search. For example, if you were seeking information about Michael J. Fox's battle with Parkinson's disease, you could add "Michael J. Fox" to the existing search term "Parkinson." If you are able to find unique, relevant words in the pertinent sources, use those words to further refine your search.
- Using quotation marks. For example, if you were seeking information on the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, you could include that entire phrase in quotation marks.
- Selecting a search engine that searches on the title and URL of web pages, such as Lycos or WebCrawler.
- Using the search engine's "Advanced Search" feature (if available) to request only results updated after a certain date or only results containing the search terms within its title or URL.
(5) If you still are not retrieving pertinent results, determine what syntax is used by the search engine you are using.
- Does the search engine treat a space as an "or?" or as an "and?"
- Does the search engine ignore articles and prepositions (even if they are enclosed within a quotation)?
- Does the search engine permit the use of wildcards?
- Does the search engine permit certain terms to be excluded?
- Can you require your search engine to return only those results that contain certain terms?
(6) Evaluate any pertinent results. (7) Some useful search strings:
- To locate statutes, ordinances, or regulations: Use the section number as your search string. If this retrieves too many results, add another piece of information, such as the title number (e.g., 35, for the statute 35 U.S.C. 102) or the name of the code (e.g., O.R.C. or ORC or Ohio Revised Code or Ohio Rev. Code).
(8) Some helpful sites for searching on the Internet: (9) Alternative to Internet searching for legal information: legal treatises (see http://www.llrx.com/columns/reference42.htm). If an Internet search has not resulted in pertinent information on your topic, a legal treatise may do the trick. The following sources may be helpful in locating the appropriate treatise: Listing of legal treatises by subject: |
|
|
